I spoke with Paul last week and asked where I can get some vinyl printed for the ‘tracklisting’ for my work in the exhibition. He gave me the name of Blowfish Media in Coventry, and since then I have decided on the size of the vinyl I want printing, made a jpg file of it and called Blowfish Media. I was told to send them an email with what I wanted and the jpg file of it attached, and they would get back to me with a quote.

I haven’t yet had a reply, but I called this morning to check up on it and they said they would get that sorted out for me soon. I’m a little bit worried about getting it in time, I know it definitely won’t be ready in time for the deadline (since that’s tomorrow!) but I’m just hoping that it will be ready in time for the exhibitions. I will get a few printed in case anything goes wrong and so I have enough for both the Coventry and London exhibitions.

Below is the jpg file I made up of how I want the vinyl to look. It will be about half the width of the print it is going to appear underneath (as seen here in my exhibition layout post) and I think it will allow people to step in closer to the work to get a look at the tracklisting, and then they would have to step back to see the entire work as a whole.

Today the book I ordered from Blurb arrived, I wasn’t expecting it to arrive in time for the deadline (I thought it would arrive just after, in plenty of time for the exhibition) so I was extremely pleased when it came through the post box. When I was ordering the book, I almost ordered a few copies, but the website advised me to order just one copy first, and then to order some more later as long as I was happy with it. I’m glad I did this, because there is just one thing that I don’t think I would be happy with showing at the exhibition and would like to change before then.

I am mostly happy with the way the book has turned out. I love the blank cover and white pages, and I love the way the triptychs look on one page with the lyrics on the page opposite. The only thing I want to change is the text on the page that describes the project and the text on the page about me. I wasn’t expecting the font to be as big as it actually is, and while I think it works on the pages next to the triptychs, I think it is far too big on the text-only pages.

So, I have gone back into blurb and edited the size of the text on those pages before ordering two more copies that I will be able to use for the exhibition, and this is also enough to have a back up just in case. I paid for fast shipping again and the book will be here in time for the exhibition. I didn’t think there was a lot of point in exhibiting a book I wasn’t totally happy with, so I am more than okay with editing and ordering a few more books to show only strong pieces at the exhibitions we are putting on.

Today I ordered my final prints at the Print Bureau at Coventry University. This is a place that I have used a number of times before and have had good results from, so felt no need to really do any research before going straight to them. I have also had the same size triptychs printed there before, for the Picturing The Body module, so I knew they would be okay to print my custom size prints, and they would be printed of good quality and in enough time for the deadline next week.

While at the print bureau, I discussed the different paper types and ended up going with semi-gloss, due to the fact that gloss would be too shiny, while matt doesn’t print quite a true black, more of a dark grey/brown. Semi-gloss is the standard paper that they print on, and I think will be the best for the colour and overall appearance of my work.

The print prices are calculated by normal sizes they print in, mine are closes to A0, making each print around £9 each (differing with the two different sizes I am having printed, but not by much). The total I ended up paying for my 6 prints was £57.86, which I think is a pretty decent price for a place that I know has a fast turnaround time and high quality prints.

Having been told to look at Nancy Honey’s work, the first project I came across was ‘Daisy’, which documents the life of Honey’s daughter. After looking at that project, I decided to look into some of her other work, and I found ‘Woman To Woman’. This struck me immediately due to the layout of the images and the use of triptychs. This is how I have been arranging my work for a while now and am continuing to do so, so I thought it would be interesting to see how and why someone else arranges their work in this way.

In Woman To Woman, Honey wanted to figure out her own sense of femininity and what makes it up. She produced images that represent herself and other women through pictures of women and representations of fashion, rock music, cinema, pornography, etc. She considers the work to be autobiographical as it only gives her view on feminism and important questions about it. Honey wanted the pictures to provocative and encourage viewers to ask questions about where we get our views on women and feminism.

I think Honey used triptychs so that she could put normal images of women next to other images of the subjects I mentioned before, like fashion or pornography. The juxtaposition of these different images with such different themes and subject matters is what makes the triptychs so provocative and is what asks the questions about femininity and puts across Honey’s views on women. This project has really shown me the power of triptychs and how different an image can be when shown alone or placed with others, changing the message of it completely. Some of the images shown here are from ‘Daisy’, which documents the life of Honey’s daughter, when placed with a photograph of a dog and a photograph of pornographic magazines, this is definitely not the same image or message we see in the original project.

Having decided to look at this project to see why someone else might use triptychs, I think it has been extremely helpful. I have found that you have to be very careful and thoughtful about which images you place next to each other, because any one being shown next to any others can completely change what it is that you’re saying with the triptychs. I think you need to have a clear message or narrative before you start putting the images together, to make sure you don’t produce work that says something you don’t want it to.

Nancy Honey’s project ‘Daisy’ is a photographic diary of her daughter, Daisy, which has been on-going for the past 29 years and became quite the obsession for her. I feel as though I can relate with the work immediately, knowing how it feels to become obsessed with wanting to constantly document everything whether it be myself, my surroundings, or in Nancy Honey’s case, her daughter.

The project shows up on her website in four different parts, Early years, Teenage, Young woman and Young mother. I think the length of this project is what really makes it, being able to see just how long Honey has been documenting her daughter’s life, and being able to see the changes as Daisy ages over a period of 29 years. I feel like my own project is something I could expand on, carrying it on throughout my life and documenting all of the changes I go through and different places I visit, etc.

As with the other photographers I have looked at, Honey seems to shoot all of her work in a similar way, resulting in similar colours and tones that work well together. This is particularly interesting, considering these photographs were shot over a very long period of time. Nancy seems to focus on the use of natural light a lot, using it as it is (I would guess due to it being more convenient, this is why I use it), but also using it in really interesting ways to capture patterns on the skin of her daughter, or just to light the subject of her daughter in different and exciting ways.